Julianna Malveaux: Maya Angelou never forgot her roots

A bouquet of flowers and a magazine showing Maya Angelou on the cover lie outside a gate at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Many people will remember Maya Angelou, who died Wednesday at the age of 86, for her phenomenal career. She was a true Renaissance woman - an author and teacher, a dancer and performer, a radio personality and a producer.

I will remember her as a friend and a generous spirit who shared her home and meals with me, but who also made time for virtually anyone who asked.

The first time I dined with Maya was at a reception in the late 1980s for Brian Lanker's book I Dream a World, a collection of portraits of black women, including Maya, who changed our times. When a gentleman attempted to get everyone's attention in the noisy room, he unwisely did so with a piercing whistle.

Soon I watched as Maya gathered herself and with her back rigid, chided the man with a rebuke - and an impromptu poem. "You will not whistle at black women," she said. "We had enough of that when we were chattel. You will respect us as the women we are," she went on. When she was finished, not a word was uttered.

So when I once asked Maya what she considered the greatest virtue, not surprisingly she told me that it was courage. Maya had courage in abundance. She needed it. She spent her childhood shuttling back and forth between San Francisco, where her mother lived, and Stamps, Ark., where she lived with her grandmother. Before her 18th birthday, she had experienced racism, rape and teen pregnancy.

These harsh beginnings made her later accomplishments all the more remarkable. Because her life coincided with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, she spent a lot of her later life speaking out against racism.

"We have already been paid for," she frequently said, recounting the horror of slave ships, the harsh conditions of slavery, the inequalities of Jim Crow and contemporary instances of inequality.

Despite being a high school dropout, Maya went on to write 36 books, was awarded more than 30 honorary degrees, and wrote and delivered a poem at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.

But while Maya ultimately became friends with the famous, she always had time for others. Each year that I served as president of Bennett College, she visited the campus and gave a lecture to our students.

Once I asked her to spend time with the honor students and she told me, sharply, "I would rather spend time with the students at the bottom." They were the ones, she said, who needed encouragement.

That was Maya.

At the end of her life, she was frail. "Getting old ain't for sissies," she said.